7d ago
Okay so can I just say how disorienting it is to not fit ANY of the standard timelines. Like I had my ovaries out at 42 and everything hit me within a week. A WEEK. And then I'd read these articles about perimenopause being this gradual transition over years and I'd just sit there like... that is genuinely not my story at all and I don't know what to do with that. I've been keeping notes on my phone because my follow-up with the specialist is next month and I don't want to show up and forget half of what's been happening. Hot flashes at 2am that wake me up completely soaked, mood stuff that comes out of nowhere, appetite that is just... weird. Some days I'm not hungry until like 3pm and then I'm starving. I've been trying to get protein in earlier when that happens, like eggs or Greek yogurt, not because I read it somewhere life-changing, just because it seems to help me feel less unhinged by noon. The thing I want to ask my doctor and keep forgetting to write down: is what I'm experiencing now even comparable to what the research talks about? Because most studies seem to be on women who went through this gradually and I feel like I'm in a completely different category that nobody has a pamphlet for. Anyone else surgical who felt like the whole language around menopause just... didn't apply to them?